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Best of SI: Gary Vider Recounts His Memories as an impostor SI Kid Interviewer

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I was basically a sports encyclopedia as a kid. You could say the name of any NBA player in the 1990s, and I could tell you where he went to college. I was really proud of myself for knowing that stuff. My family didn’t have cable TV, so most of my sports news came from the New York Post; I would read it religiously every morning before school and see how my favorite teams, the Knicks and the Rangers, did the night before.

On the morning of March 28, 1995, the big story was that the Knicks were hosting the Bulls. I had never seen Michael Jordan play in person, so I asked my dad if we could go to the game. He said he would make a few calls and see what he could do.

As I was heading out the door to catch the school bus, my dad told me we would be going to the game. I always had a difficult time concentrating in school, but knowing I was going to see MJ that night made that day especially challenging. At 1:30 p.m. my dad came and got me out of class; he was waiting in the school parking lot in his blue Chevy Caprice.

A Chevy Caprice is commonly used as an unmarked car by police detectives, which was why my dad bought it. He used it to his full advantage. The drive from our home on Long Island to Madison Square Garden should have taken more than an hour, but when you are riding in an unmarked cop car people tend to get out of the way when they see you behind them. We could do it in 40 minutes.

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